Don't be surprised. I'd think the Economist would know better--there have been far uglier ads aired in races for years. American politics is dirty, nasty and holds nothing back. The notion of civility has all but gone out the door in the quest for power.

My wife -- a Republican by the way -- commented to me while on a recent trip to England how refreshing it was to see a major party leader who was an atheist. She said, "At home he would have to lie to get elected. And none of it means anything about what job he would do. Why are Americans so stupid about this stuff?"

If you are a Unitarian Universalist (Harvard was founded to train Unitarian ministers) one can be in a Congregation and, if one is inclined, be an atheist. The "Coming of Age" for the adolescents in that denomination is, in part, to have the youths visit a variety of other religious services and then present their tentative beliefs.

(My children also received 26 hours of sex ed--much, of it about interpersonal relationships)

Call it humanism, and one gets a less negative reaction than atheist.

I tell people I am an a-theist, not an anti-theist.

There are principle ins UU (Inherent worth and dignity of all people is the first one.)

It is the kind of religion which, my guess, is the underlying belief of many Economist readers. Not everything is moral, but there is a wide "ok" zone, stretching across the best of the major religions.

The problem with the "don't talk about it" attitude toward religion is that one cedes the public discussion to those with particularistic views of religion.

ccusa, I appreciate the long response, although I think you could do without the ad-hominems. For the record, I have never claimed that anyone's religion is "sickening".

I have also not suggested that religious people should not be allowed to speak out about their faith. All I did was state a wish that it weren't such a fundamental part of political discourse in this country. I have no intentions of forcing anyone to do anything, but I do think it's OK for me to try to convince others of my position?

Back to the point at hand, I find it fascinating to see faith justified by so utilitarian means, even though the line of thinking runs back at least to Voltaire. I disagree with this reasoning for a couple of reasons:

1) People pick and choose the tenets of faith they want to follow anyway. There is no lack of examples of religious people who have done horrendous things, and (importantly!) didn't feel like they in any way departed from their faith. So faith is certainly not a garantor of good ethics.

2) A casual glance at the state of the world would seem to suggest that secular humanist societies are not inherently more evil than overtly religious ones. So there is no empirical evidence for this position.

3) Most importantly, I feel much more confident that someone who has thought through his ethical choices will follow-though with them, as opposed to someone who just had them foisted on him as part of a religion (think of the difference between learning a scientific law by rote vs. being made to understand how it was derived). That is what I would consider a strong foundation for someone's ethics, and I think you can get there with or without religion.

Jesus Christ would be totally unelectable in the US, especially in the Bible belt. Republicanism and Jesus' words are 100% incompatible.

And this American hypocrisy that makes everyone profess "faith" is sickening and frightening. The voice of the "enraged woman" on the video above makes me laugh and puke at the same time. The Iran of the West, indeed.

indeed wunala. your replies in the face of your own ignorance have been quite amusing. is there an age group where replying with, "whatever" and "will you let me play with my friends oh master of the universe" counts as a witty retort?

doublehelix, my guess is that an Aqua Buddha is a garden variety Buddha that's been painted a nice shade of pale green-blue - a color that brings back memories of early Chevy Novas and obsolete shower curtains from the Pastel Period of American popular design. It's no doubt a gesture toward cultural syncretism, and thus a disqualification for elective office.

doublehelix, my guess is that an Aqua Buddha is a garden variety Buddha that's been painted a nice shade of pale green-blue - a color that brings back memories of early Chevy Novas and obsolete shower curtains from the Pastel Period of American popular design. It's no doubt a gesture toward cultural syncretism, and thus a disqualification for elective office.

Heimdel, I know white space is my friend. Old habits die hard. The government gives tax breaks to traditional religious institutions like established churches because those institutions do a lot to care for people. Faith based initiatives is an extension of that, a controversial one though. I can understand skepticism with funding them.

1) An unwillingness to believe in supernatural entities does not imply a disbelief in constraints. Ethics and morals can arise from various schools of thought, some based on the supernatural, some based on the natural.

2) White space is your friend. While I disagree with many of your opinions, I find them valuable, if only to (help) understand what a goodly chunk of the population believes. But I can't read 20+ lines of run-on text on a computer screen. I may or may not be alone in this...

* I don't see why belief in supernatural entities should entitle an organization to special subsidies from the government to engage in socialist activities (i.e., governmental funding of "faith based" organizations to help the needy).

* Nor do I see why such organizations are deserving of tax breaks simply because they are imaginative/gullible. They are some of the most property-owning organizations around, and they should pay their taxes like any other organization. Given the scope of their massive holdings (aka "wealth"), it's hard to swallow the idea that they're "non-profit" by simple virtue of having a prophet.

* Like DH, who is becoming much more agreeable (or at least I'm agreeing, to my disbelief, much more often), I have no idea what the Sam Hell an "Aqua Buddha" is. But it sounds like almost as much fun as a Chocolate Jesus ("I don't care if it rains or freezes, so long as I've got my Chocolate Jesus, sitting on the dashboard of my car...")

That said, I like Paul even less after his rebuttal ad than I did before Conway's "attack" ad...

Lafayette, a more detailed response: to complain, this is what you need if you're a peaceful person who is not in any way a physical threat to your neighbor in a violent sort of way: you need to be being sought out, in ways that intrude into your life even if you're trying to avoid it, or attacked physically in the street for who you are, or having people not agree to enter into contracts with you, whatever it is but something intense and because of who you are. But if that's not happening to you, and if you have all the legal rights with respect to access to the political and legal institutions (including not only the process but I'll even concede that the substantive laws aren't illegitimately tilted against you so as to essentially obviate your process rights), then your complaints are just hissy fits and they need to stop. The line is tough to draw in the specifics, but here's a starter: it can't simply be that people disagree with you, if they do it respectfully and with clearly due regard to your dignity as a person. Your due process rights and all that can't be violated just for that. And with respect to atheism, I simply can't see how there is any ground to complain in the US. In fact, that goes for every creed in the US. Every creed gets that respect, by and large and for the most part. If you think about it, its just true. I think Muslims are getting it about as rough as you can get it in the US, and there are important constraints at work that are keeping it in check and even moving the ball in the right direction, towards understanding, and we shouldn't pretend like they're not there. But back to atheists, they're free here, it just so happens that the majority of people don't overtly agree with them and want to take measures to prevent the spread of your ideas, because they have a different idea, one that commands the majority, at least for now and assuming the rules are followed. That's not grounds for complaints, much less to be sicken by it.

I'll finish with another tough hard-hitting statement: For constraintless-liking-folk you sure come up with a lot of rules and constraints on others. Convincing a majority of people is no longer good enough. Convenient. But maybe this opportunistic approach, and the idea that enables it, is the danger others are protecting themselves from, to put it in your terms. Their terms are more complex, because under their system they would do what's right irrespective of the consequences, so the terms are wholly different: it starts something along the lines of the inherent beauty in logic and symmetry, and the idea that there is something true and real to a universal rule of conduct applicable to everyone, and from there, a higher power that created this reality and us, which gets tied into our nature as humans with reason who can see this stuff, somehow which all comes together as a command to do this universally right thing, that it's bad for you because of what you are not to follow the rule and blah blah blah blah blah. Consequences play a part in the universal rule but the idea is that you do the right thing even if other parts of the system aren't working properly and thereby making the consequences of the right thing seem quite bad under the circumstances. Atheism doesn't get you that. This is just to give a taste of the ideas being rejected, being claimed to be sickening that they don't automatically let something else beat them in a democracy. I'm not a proselytizer or however you spell it, I just don't want what at least seem to me to be bad ideas to overtake what seems to be much more serious, slowly-developed and well-backed good ideas, so I'm trying to point this out. I promise I won't write anymore.

It seems to me that you have a very spoon-fed view of atheism. Nothing that you described atheism as is correct in any form. Allow me to lay out Atheism and it's "beliefs" for you

1)There seems to be no logical reason to assume that a Super Natural being created the universe, and therefore
2)There seems to be no reason to act in such a way that denotes a belief in such a Being.

That is IT. there is no inherent dogma in atheism. Atheist is simply used to describe a person who does not accept that a god created everything. I feel the need to repeat myself: THERE IS NO INHERENT DOGMA IN ATHEISM. Further, i must add that Atheism is in no way akin to a faith by any stretch of the imagination.

One last thing. "I just don't want what at least seem to me to be bad ideas to overtake what seems to be much more serious, slowly-developed and well-backed good ideas, so I'm trying to point this out."

Serious? Well-backed? Good? Oh come now.
What exactly are you rambling about? there is no well-backed religious claims concerning anything substantial. Good? That is a simple subjective conjecture. Most ( if not all) of religious ideology is based on the word of god, which is itself an iron age scripture that is backed only by its own circular reasoning.
Lets Recap:
Atheism has NO INHERENT IDEOLOGY, therefore there can be no bad Atheist ideas to throw out.
Religious Claims are NOT BACKED or SUPPORTED by anything save their own circular reasoning.

" But the disparity in treatment between standard practice in many electoral races (especially in the more conservative regions of the US) and alleged tramplings of religious freedoms in Europe are wearing me thin."
-wunala

probably because you haven't the foggiest concept what religious freedom means.

lafayette, sorry for the slur, I owe you an answer so here it is: the key point I'm making was made well by Michael Gerson, who I don't necessarily agree with but who wrote an excellent article:

"...the personal and ethical challenge presented by atheism: Of course we can be good without God, but why the hell bother? If there are no moral lines except the ones we draw ourselves, why not draw and redraw them in places most favorable to our interests?"

That's essentially the point, why I call it foundation-less. The rules don't find support in the creed. If you're skeptical, which is fair and I think probably if I'm honest my viewpoint as well (I'm getting older but still young), you're just as foundation-less really. It's right to be slightly skeptical of someone like that but less so than the outright atheist, and I'd think someone like that would get a pass in the US, which is why you really only have to make vague religious statements, showing respect for it at the very least, before you go on to rail against its restraints and get elected. I would also note that outright lunatic religious people, where it strains reason, who for example say the Earth was created 6K years ago, they're pretty much disqualified for the most part. So you have some craziness on the ends, and then you have the vast middle that is completely reasonable, normal really, and I'll conclude with you have very clever people trying to move around the goal posts by arguing there's some structural problem with our democracy if avowed atheists don't run the show, proved each time the population keeps them from power... My view is there's a bit of contempt for the population going on here, and I'd have enough lecturing about the "sickening" structural problems every time a particular substantive outcome is not achieved.

I would argue that although accusing someone of not being a Christian is a damaging political attack in the USA, there is another accusation that hurts a candidate even more.

Atheism (which goes beyond just 'not being a true Christian') is the biggest handicap a politician can have in the USA. Mormons, Muslims, and gays all do better in polls that explicitly ask voters if they would be willing to vote for a candidate that has certain characteristics.

Strange, given that it's the fastest growing "religious" group in the US - near 20% in the most recent polls, literally doubling since the 1990's, whereas other minorities such as Mormons, Muslims, and Jews each comprise less than 4% of the population.